Awakening
by my-echo
Summary: Passion, love, and worry enfold Arwen and Aragorn in the first morning after their marriage. Written for the DBCA Woven Into Song Challenge...won first place for some reason. R&R, if ye please.


**A/N: I know none or very few of you will understand the Elvish words contained within this fic, so for translation, go to **grey-company dot org/Circle/language/phrase.htm **(the url won't post for some reason, so I had to spell out the "dot org"...)**

**This not my best piece of work, but I thought I'd give the songfic genre a whirl. What could it hurt, right? See what you think of it…be kind, por favor….**

**This fic is both book and movie-trilogy-based. Just my semi-poetic idea of Aragorn and Arwen's first morning together after their marriage, interwoven with the wonderful song "Fear" by Sarah McLachlan. **

**Flashbacks and Elvish words/phrases are in **_italics_**; song lyrics are also in **_italics_**, but with a "--" beforehand. **

* * *

_--Morning smiles_

_like the face_

_of a newborn child,_

_innocent, unknowing._

* * *

Eyes, open. See the sunlight pouring through the windows, love? 

_Amin mela lle. _

You are no king when by my side.

You are only a Man, and my Man at that. How sweet the words….

_--Winter's end_

_promises _

_of a long-lost friend._

_Speaks to me of comfort._

And here you are, _a'maelamin, _my Aragorn. 

And I am here, with you, and I have not gone away.

I have not sailed.

Did you really, in your heart, believe it that I would?

Oh, _mela_, could you truly be so foolish and so blind? You knew me, you knew my strength, my will, my iron pride.

Born of millennia and I have thousands of experiences that could never be matched by your own, hard life though you have lived.

_A_, you look so bemused, Estel...

Touch me….and be assured….it is no dream that both dulls your senses and makes you come so strangely alive….

Your hands, like firebrands.

Oh, I love you.

* * *

He feels the onset of sweet madness, to have her here, at last, to be pressed to her lips, to hold her in the palms of his hands— 

And through it all, the vision of Elrond will not fade.

Her father's voice echoes over and over within his tortured, guilty, besotted mind.

_Arwen's time is ending._

* * *

_--but I fear_

_I have nothing to give_

* * *

_--I have so much_

_to lose here in this lonely place._

* * *

Thinking of her father, she feels a tight, white-hot clench in her stomach. _A, atar._

She will see him no more.

She has given up her family for a Man.

Part of her is cut to bleeding ribbons.

Part of her doesn't care. _This is my choice. My path. I was not sent here only to follow._

* * *

_--Tangled up in your embrace_

_there's nothing I'd like better than _

_to fall._

* * *

And so he does fall, spiraling into half-consciousness as her fingers feel of his face, the tumbling dark hair and the friction of his beard against her lily-white hands.

* * *

--_but I fear_

_I have nothing to give_

* * *

They are lost. They are entwined within each other, loving. 

He cannot think. There is nothing, nothing but beauty, and the pain and joy of love.

* * *

_--Wind in time_

_rapes the flower_

_trembling on the vine._

* * *

He sees himself growing old, and fading away, while a long-lived Elf-turned-mortal stands faithfully by his side, looking evergreen and youthful even in mortal middle age.

* * *

--_and nothing yields to shelter_

_from above._

_They say temptation will destroy our love._

_The never ending hunger_

* * *

He is afraid. 

He sees himself dying, while the evergreen Arwen stands faithfully by his side, still.

To the end she will stand by him, and this frightens and comforts him more than he can dream.

* * *

--_I fear_

_I have nothing to give_

* * *

--_I have so much_

_to lose here in this lonely place_

* * *

She sees the vision in her mind's eye. 

The horror of the loss and the pain of being utterly, inexplicably, alone.

Yes, she will have her children. But it will not be enough.

It will never be enough. Half her soul will die when he passes.

She hears her father's voice. Sees him in her mind's eye, telling her the terror of mortality.

_And there will be no comfort for you. No comfort to ease the pain of his passing._

_Whether by the sword or the slow decay of time, Aragorn will die._

_But you. You, my daughter, will linger. As night falling in winter which comes without a star._

* * *

--_Tangled up in our embrace_

_there's nothing I'd like better than _

_to fall_

* * *

And so she puts the thoughts away for present time and with the core of all her being focuses on her love, her only.

* * *

--_but I fear_

_I have nothing to give_

_I have so much to lose._

_I have nothing to give._

_We have so much to lose…_

* * *

And, beautifully, they do not care. 


End file.
